Blogs

In this post, Kath Bilsborough & John Hughes summarise their presentation at the MaWSIG Showcase in Brighton earlier this year, where they discuss how materials writers come to be.

In this post, Catarina Pontes summarises the talk she gave at the MaWSIG and BrazTESOL Joint Online Conference in November 2023, where she presented five different ways in which teachers can adapt materials to make their learners feel more engaged and make the most of their learning experience.

In this post David Byrne and Mark Heffernan discuss how reading is often presented in EFL materials, and make the case that practice alone does not lead to perfection. They propose an alternative approach, exploring how to write materials that, instead of practising or testing, raise learners’ awareness and development of reading skills.

In this post, Julie Moore summarises the workshop she gave at the 2023 Harrogate PCE, where she shared her insights into the role of a lexicographer working on learner’s dictionaries. She also showed how some of the skills needed to work on a learner’s dictionary can be transferred into other areas of materials writing. In this post, she doesn’t try to cover everything explored in the workshop; instead, she focuses on a key area that’s especially transferable; the selection of example sentences to illustrate vocabulary.

In this blog post, Debora Catavello shares some preliminary findings from an exploratory study into EAP materials that she conducted in 2023. In her study, Debora starts with the premise that teaching materials are the ‘instantiation of principles drawn from the broad fields of second language acquisition theory and language teaching theory‘ (Timmis, 2002, p. 217). She then examines the extent to which a set of her own materials aligns with the principle of authenticity, and explores ways to resolve the so-called ‘EAP genre paradox’.

In this post, Bethan Stokes summarises her webinar in which she addressed the issue of how we become materials writers. She shared with us her insights into the process, reflecting on her own journey, and suggested ways for others to get started. She finished her talk with tips for practitioners to write materials that are fun and interesting, touching on current and controversial topics.